BelleVie Care, a home care provider that’s working to modernise and improve adult home care across the Thames Valley region, has announced that it has received £2.1 million in seed and grant funding from a group of ambitious, purpose-led investors who share its mission.
BelleVie’s Wellbeing Support Teams provide high-quality, award-winning care across Abingdon, Didcot, Oxford, Wantage, Wallingford and Witney, with the startup company expanding its operations across the rest of Oxfordshire and into neighbouring Buckinghamshire.
The £1.6 million seed funding round, led by Skagen Conscience Capital, will enable the company to scale up its home care network across the region. Also providing their backing to this seed round are investment fund Northstar Ventures, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Treebeard Trust.
BelleVie’s services across Oxfordshire, rated ‘Good and outstanding for responsiveness’ by the Care Quality Commission, support older people to thrive at home by deploying innovative ways of working inspired by the successful Dutch ‘Buurtzorg’ model.
The company’s approach to providing care that values both the carers and the people they support is rated 9.9/10 by independently verified reviews website homecare.co.uk.
This investment has also unlocked a further £550,000 in grant funding from UKRI’s Healthy Ageing Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK, the government body supporting business-led innovation across sectors and regions. This brings the funding received in this round to £2.15 million and the total the company has raised to £3.4 million.
The company values its deep connections with the communities it serves and works with local care organisations and charities, including Dementia Oxfordshire and the October Club.
BelleVie’s innovative care model centres around 10-person, self-managing teams, each serving their local community, providing continuity of care and building trusted relationships. This model gives its Wellbeing Support Workers more time to provide meaningful services to the people they support.
Its services are funded by a unique monthly subscription model. Teams flex as the needs of those they support change, using bespoke rostering tools to rapidly adapt.
Most of BelleVie’s team members are paid employees rather than zero-hours contractors, and the company is proud to be an accredited Living Wage Employer. BelleVie recruits people based on their values rather than their previous experience.
With many of its employees coming from a non-care background, its excellent onboarding and training, and a 66% employee Net Promoter Score (NPS), BelleVie is proving that it can solve the recruitment and retention problems at the heart of the care crisis.
The unique insights gained by its teams on the ground enable it to build a managed marketplace of third-party products and services, providing whatever people need to live their best lives at home.
Oxfordshire Wellbeing Support Leader Emma Pithers said: “This funding allows us to expand our operations, offering more people in Oxfordshire our high-quality home care, helping more people to live well at home for as long as safely possible.
“It also enables us to recruit more people from within the local community, which means our work has a larger impact on everyone in the local area. We couldn’t be more thrilled to receive this funding for BelleVie in the Thames Valley region”.
BelleVie co-founder and CEO Trudie Fell, commenting on the latest funding round, said: “We’re thrilled to have the backing of this great group of investors; their belief in us is a great validation of our model. Together, we can address society’s most pressing challenges.”
Jack Goldstein, Investment Director of Skagen Conscience Capital, said: “We are incredibly proud to empower BelleVie Care in their goal to support older people to thrive at home. The way adult home care is currently delivered in the UK requires fixing, and BelleVie’s multi-award winning operating model and technology platform will do just that.”
Alasdair Greig, Director at Northstar Ventures, said: “We are thrilled to be supporting a company that has such a novel and disruptive approach to solving the care crisis, one of our most intractable societal challenges. The BelleVie model drives dramatic improvement in the lives of both care workers and the people they support, and we look forward to seeing it scaled rapidly across the UK.”
Denise Holle, Head of Social Investment at Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “Through its social investment in BelleVie, Joseph Rowntree Foundation is furthering its mission to inspire social change and address the root causes of poverty and economic insecurity. BelleVie is reinventing the delivery and business model for home care in the UK.
“It has put carers and clients at the heart of its model and is using technology to enable, rather than replace more and better human interactions. BelleVie is also an accredited Living Wage Employer, and this is another important aspect of its operating model, which JRF is delighted to be supporting.”
Helen Crampin, Innovation and Technology Lead, UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge, said: “We’re pleased to support this innovative model in the care sector from our Innovate UK funding partnership with Northstar Ventures.
“We aim to work with partners to support businesses that are focused on helping people to remain active, productive, independent and socially connected across the generations. Developing new models of care that lead to benefits for both carers and older people is an important issue for the future”
